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I
THERE they are, my fifty men and women | |
| Naming me the fifty poems finished! | |
| Take them, Love, the book and me together: | |
| Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. | |
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II
Rafael made a century of sonnets, | 5 |
| Made and wrote them in a certain volume | |
| Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil | |
| Else he only used to draw Madonnas: | |
| These, the world might view—but one, the volume. | |
| Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you. | 10 |
| Did she live and love it all her lifetime | |
| Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, | |
| Die, and let it drop beside her pillow | |
| Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory, | |
| Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving, | 15 |
| Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s, | |
| Rafael’s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s? | |
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III
You and I would rather read that volume, | |
| (Taken to his beating bosom by it) | |
| Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, | 20 |
| Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas— | |
| Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, | |
| Her, that visits Florence in a vision, | |
| Her, that’s left with lilies in the Louvre— | |
| Seen by us and all the world in circle. | 25 |
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IV
You and I will never read that volume. | |
| Guido Reni, like his own eye’s apple | |
| Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. | |
| Guido Reni dying, all Bologna | |
| Cried, and the world cried too, “Ours, the treasure!” | 30 |
| Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. | |
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V
Dante once prepared to paint an angel: | |
| Whom to please? You whisper “Beatrice.” | |
| While he mused and traced it and retraced it, | |
| (Peradventure with a pen corroded | 35 |
| Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, | |
| When, his left-hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked, | |
| Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, | |
| Bit into the live man’s flesh for parchment, | |
| Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, | 40 |
| Let the wretch go festering through Florence)— | |
| Dante, who loved well because he hated, | |
| Hated wickedness that hinders loving, | |
| Dante standing, studying his angel,— | |
| In there broke the folk of his Inferno. | 45 |
| Says he—“Certain people of importance” | |
| (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) | |
| “Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet.” | |
| Says the poet—“Then I stopped my painting.” | |
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VI
You and I would rather see that angel, | 50 |
| Painted by the tenderness of Dante, | |
| Would we not?—than read a fresh Inferno. | |
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VII
You and I will never see that picture. | |
| While he mused on love and Beatrice, | |
| While he softened o’er his outlined angel, | 55 |
| In they broke, those “people of importance:” | |
| We and Bice bear the loss forever. | |
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VIII
What of Rafael’s sonnets, Dante’s picture? | |
| This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not | |
| Once, and only once, and for one only, | 60 |
| (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language | |
| Fit and fair and simple and sufficient— | |
| Using nature that’s an art to others, | |
| Not, this one time, art that’s turned his nature, | |
| Ay, of all the artists living, loving, | 65 |
| None but would forego his proper dowry,— | |
| Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,— | |
| Does he write? he fain would paint a picture, | |
| Put to proof art alien to the artist’s, | |
| Once, and only once, and for one only, | 70 |
| So to be the man and leave the artist, | |
| Gain the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow. | |
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IX
Wherefore? Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement! | |
| He who smites the rock and spreads the water, | |
| Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, | 75 |
| Even he, the minute makes immortal, | |
| Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute. | |
| Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. | |
| While he smites, how can he but remember, | |
| So he smote before, in such a peril, | 80 |
| When they stood and mocked—“Shall smiting help us?” | |
| When they drank and sneered—“A stroke is easy!” | |
| When they wiped their mouths and went their journey, | |
| Throwing him for thanks—“But drought was pleasant.” | |
| Thus old memories mar the actual triumph; | 85 |
| Thus the doing savors of disrelish; | |
| Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat; | |
| O’er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, | |
| Carelessness or consciousness—the gesture. | |
| For he bears an ancient wrong about him, | 90 |
| Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, | |
| Hears, yet one time more, the ’customed prelude— | |
| “How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?” | |
| Guesses what is like to prove the seque!— | |
| “Egypt’s flesh pots—nay, the drought was better.” | 95 |
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X
Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant! | |
| Theirs, the Sinai-forehead’s cloven brilliance, | |
| Right-arm’s rod-sweep, tongue’s imperial fiat. | |
| Never dares the man put off the prophet. | |
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XI
Did he love one face from out the thousands, | 100 |
| (Were she Jethro’s daughter, white and wifely, | |
| Were she but the Æthiopian bondslave,) | |
| He would envy yon dumb patient camel, | |
| Keeping a reserve of scanty water | |
| Meant to save his own life in the desert; | 105 |
| Ready in the desert to deliver | |
| (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) | |
| Hoard and life together for his mistress. | |
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XII
I shall never, in the years remaining, | |
| Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, | 110 |
| Make you music that should all-express me; | |
| So it seems: I stand on my attainment. | |
| This of verse alone, one life allows me; | |
| Verse and nothing else have I to give you. | |
| Other heights in other lives, God willing: | 115 |
| All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love! | |
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XIII
Yet a semblance of resource avails us— | |
| Shade so finely touched, love’s sense must seize it. | |
| Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, | |
| Lines I write the first time and the last time. | 120 |
| He who works in fresco, steals a hairbrush, | |
| Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, | |
| Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, | |
| Makes a strange art of an art familiar, | |
| Fills his lady’s missal-marge with flowerets. | 125 |
| He who blows through bronze, may breathe through silver, | |
| Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. | |
| He who writes, may write for once as I do. | |
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XIV
Love, you saw me gather men and women, | |
| Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, | 130 |
| Enter each and all, and use their service, | |
| Speak from every mouth,—the speech, a poem. | |
| Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, | |
| Hope and fears, belief and disbelieving: | |
| I am mine and yours—the rest be all men’s, | 135 |
| Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty, | |
| Let me speak this once in my true person, | |
| Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea, | |
| Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence: | |
| Pray you, look on these my men and women, | 140 |
| Take and keep my fifty poems finished; | |
| Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also! | |
| Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things. | |
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XV
Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon’s self! | |
| Here in London, yonder late in Florence, | 145 |
| Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured, | |
| Curving on a sky imbrued with color, | |
| Drifted over Fiesole by twilight, | |
| Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s-breadth. | |
| Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, | 150 |
| Rounder ’twixt the cypresses and rounder, | |
| Perfect till the nightingales applauded. | |
| Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, | |
| Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs, | |
| Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, | 155 |
| Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. | |
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XVI
What, there’s nothing in the moon noteworthy? | |
| Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal, | |
| Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy), | |
| All her magic (’tis the old sweet mythos), | 160 |
| She would turn a new side to her mortal, | |
| Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman— | |
| Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace, | |
| Blind to Galileo on his turret, | |
| Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even! | 165 |
| Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal— | |
| When she turns round, comes again in heaven, | |
| Opens out anew for worse or better! | |
| Proves she like some portent of an iceberg | |
| Swimming full upon the ship it founders, | 170 |
| Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? | |
| Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire | |
| Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? | |
| Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu | |
| Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest, | 175 |
| Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. | |
| Like the bodied heaven in his clearness | |
| Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work, | |
| When they ate and drank and saw God also! | |
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XVII
What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know. | 180 |
| Only this is sure—the sight were other, | |
| Not the moon’s same side, born late in Florence, | |
| Dying now impoverished here in London. | |
| God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures | |
| Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, | 185 |
| One to show a woman when he loves her! | |
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XVIII
This I say of me, but think of you, Love! | |
| This to you—yourself my moon of poets! | |
| Ah, but that’s the world’s side, there’s the wonder, | |
| Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you! | 190 |
| There, in turn I stand with them and praise you— | |
| Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. | |
| But the best is when I glide from out them, | |
| Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, | |
| Come out on the other side, the novel | 195 |
| Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, | |
| Where I hush and bless myself with silence. | |
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XIX
Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, | |
| Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, | |
| Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it, | 200 |
| Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom! | |
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